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How long would you wait for your lover, if you knew not whether they were alive, and you yourself had changed almost beyond recognition?

This is a beautiful, understated, unsentimental Odyssey of quiet longing, endurance, and transformation.

"This journey will be the axle of my life."
Inman's journey is across hundreds of dangerous miles, fleeing war and trying to get to where his love lives, four years after they parted.

"She had made her way to a place where an entirely other order prevailed from what she had always known."
Ada's journey takes place within a few miles of her home.

It's no coincidence that Inman's treasured book is a travel book (whereas Ruby "held a deep distrust of travel", even to the shops).

Times are tough, but at least Ada and Inman have confidence in who and what it is they yearn for.

Structure

Most of the novel alternates between Ada’s and Inman's separate struggles to survive, with backstory gradually provided by their reminiscences. Each of Inman's chapters involves a dramatic encounter, good or bad, that sheds light on his character, as well as the trials of war and wilderness. Ada is 26, orphaned, nearly destitute, and trying to cope with a little land, but no staff or skill. The varying tempo works well.

Both Inman and Ada cultivate the art of really seeing: Inman is ever watchful, noticing every little sign in nature or people's behaviour that may signal danger (a shadow behind leaves, a blade hidden in a hairdo); Ada learns to see the signs of seasons, weather, harvest, birds, and animals.

The language is sometimes a little archaic, as it should be. Quotation marks are not used, but I didn't really feel their absence: dialog is usually prefaced with a long dash.

Civil War

Although the backdrop is the American civil war, I didn't feel hampered by my relative lack of knowledge of US history. There was enough background detail to picture daily life, but the politics and the war were external to the characters, and hence to me as a reader.

Right and Wrong; Revenge and Forgiveness

Inman is a deserter: badly injured, but a deserter none-the-less. He was never a natural killer, is haunted by what he's seen (and done), and doesn't believe in the cause anyway, if he ever did. There are gangs wanting bounty for finding deserters, and desperate men who will kill for any reason and none. Coupled with his inherently peaceful and forgiving nature, repeatedly put to the test, the risks are great.

Pondering the story of a man born blind, Inman asks himself "What would be the cost of not having an enemy? Who could you strike for retribution other than yourself?"

But retribution isn't really his mindset; he's almost too good to be true, given the hardships and dangers he faces, such as stealing food, but leaving more money than it's worth, putting himself in grave danger to help strangers,and avoiding and preventing violence, even when it's not really his responsibility and would be easier to walk away. He's certainly more forgiving than the disgraced preacher, Veasey.

The Sustenance of Literature - and Music

An unexpected pleasure was the underlying thread of the solace to be found in books.

On the very first page, Inman is in military hospital "settling his mind" with a treasured copy of Travels of William Bartram. Throughout the story, he returns to this book, in small snippets, at times of need. (view spoiler)[When he's reunited with Ada, he reads her an extract. (hide spoiler)]

Ada's relationship with books fluctuates: at her lowest point "the characters seemed to lead fuller lives than she did", and when she's first dragooned into hard labour to make the land viable, she drops the habit of keeping a book in her pocket. However, at the end of the day, reading aloud is a pleasure and a bonding experience for her and Ruby. We glimpse the privilege of opening someone's eyes to the joys of powerful stories.

Another, seemingly irredeemable, character finds salvation in music, starting off with a handful of standard fiddle tunes, but making his own instruments and composing a large repertoire of moving pieces. "The grouping of sounds... said something comforting to him about the rule of creation,... a powerful argument against the notion that things just happen."

Couples

At least as important as the relationship between Ada and Inman, and possibly more interesting, is that between Ada (educated, city girl, now alone in the country) and Ruby (an illiterate who was an almost feral child). She comes to help Ada, not quite as a servant, not - initially - as a friend, let alone equal, but Ruby takes charge of instructing in the sense of educating Ada and even telling her what, when, and how to do. "To Ada, Ruby's monologues seemed composed mainly of verbs, all of them tiring" and "Ruby made a point of refusing to tackle all the unpleasant tasks herself." Ada puts up with this because she realises that "Ruby would not let her fail", whereas a hired hand might just walk away.

There are moments when (view spoiler)[you wonder how far Ada and Ruby's friendship will go: when Ruby puts Ada's bracelet on her own wrist - but then puts it back again; when Ada slips a ring on Ruby's finger - which Ruby takes off. The latter is just after Inman has returned, and Ruby has said "We can do without him... There's not a thing we can't do ourselves." But when she realises Ada loves Inman, she backtracks completely, and tactfully contrives to leave them alone. (hide spoiler)].

Inman draws strength from his devotion to and memories of Ada. He occasionally looks at other women (water is a recurring theme), but it's all very chaste. (view spoiler)[Even when the young widow who's just lost her child, asks him to share her bed without touching, nothing happened nor did he really want it to. (hide spoiler)]

Then there's Ruby's estranged, good-for-nothing father, Stobrod, and Ada's role in handling and healing their relationship.

Nature Names

There is mythical power in names. Ada's education was academic and theoretical: she knows the names of almost none of the plants and animals, and that is part of her helplessness in her new situation. In contrast, Ruby has an encyclopaedic knowledge of such things, and thus she takes the lead in survival.

Ruby is also guided by signs that Ada's preacher father, Monroe, would have dismissed as superstition. Ada "chose to view the signs as metaphoric... a way of being alert" so that "she could honor them". But a hundred pages later, she writes to her cousin in Charleston about how field work has changed her, "Should a crow fly over I mark it in all its details, but I do not seek analogy for its blackness... I suspect it is somehow akin to contentment." It's worth noting that the first chapter is titled "the shadow of a crow" and the last "spirits of crows, dancing".

The Ending and the Epilogue

Twenty pages from the end, it was so tender and understated and perfect that I had to pause. I was sure it would end badly, and I couldn't bear it.

(view spoiler)[The reunion of Ada and Inman is wonderfully, but unsentimentally, done. He finds her, dressed like a man, hunting turkeys, rather than in the fine skirts he'd remembered. She doesn't recognise him, so he apologies and walks away. When she does recognise him (by his voice), there are no dramas, just tentative steps towards an unknown present and even less certain future. "No previous formula of etiquette seemed to apply." Even when left alone, they're unsure what to do - so Inman reads a passage from Bartram... and then does the washing up! But eventually they talk, "to rewrite even a shard of the past" as lover do "before they can move forward paired". Eventually, "The world was such a lonely place, and to lie down beside him, skin to skin, seemed the only cure."

Then they plan their future. "Their whole lives stretched ahead of them" but also "youth was about over for them and what lay ahead was another country entirely, wherein the possibilities narrowed down moment by moment." It's all too good to be last. Inman is shot by Teague's gang. Ada gets to him in time to hold him as he dies.

This is a horrible symmetry with much earlier mention of what happened to Ada's own parents, who met and loved when young, were separated for years, and joyfully reunited, but only very briefly, before one of them died.

The epilogue compensates for the tragedy of Inman's death by showing Ada and her daughter living happily with Ruby, Ruby's husband, their children, and Ruby's reformed father. However, without that, the final scene would be touching and, slightly ambiguous, which I think I prefer. (hide spoiler)]

Reminds me Of

(The links are to my reviews of these books.)

The quiet stoicism, solace in literature, and connection to the soil, reminded me of one of my two favourite books, Stoner.

The almost literal saving power of books in the midst of turmoil and deprivation is something Jeanette Winterson stresses in Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?.

The harsh beauty of the mountains, coupled with love and longing, reminded me a little of Brokeback Mountain. The similarity of title may be a factor, too.

Quotes

* "The first smear of foggy dawn and [he] waited for the world to begin shaping outside."

* "Nature... sometimes calls attention to its specific features and recommends them for interpretation."

* "Educated beyond the point considered wise for females" but "impractically for the demands of an exposed life".

* "Though not a childless couple, they had retained an air of romance in their marriage, as the barren often do."

* "The foul country... was vague and ominous in the moonlight."

* "He would like to love the world as it was... Hate took no effort other than to look about."

* "When it became too dark to read and the air turned blue and started to congeal with mist."

* "Celebration had been a lacking feature of her life since survival had such a sharp way of focusing one's attention elsewhere."

* "She had lived so long as to have achieved a state of near transparency."

* Gypsies had "a fine honesty in their predatory relationship with the rest of mankind." I know what he means, but...

* "Dying there seemed easier than not... Inman had seen so much death it had come to seem a random thing... it no longer seemed dark and mysterious. He feared... he might never make a civilian."

* "The easement of maiden, spinster, widow", though if your knowledge of anatomy is "to a degree hypothetical", your fantasies may focus on fingers, wrists and forearms.

* A path "so coiled and knotted he could not say what its general tendency was... He felt fuddled and wayless."

* "Marrying a woman for her beauty makes no more sense than eating a bird for its singing."

* "The pain settled to a distant noise, like living by a river."

* In a dead man's clothes "he felt he had donned the husk of another life... as a ghost must, occupying the shape of the past to little effect."

* "A suggestion of trees as in a quick sketch, a casual gesture toward the form of trees... as if there were no such thing as landscape."

* "The sentimentality of finding poignancy in the fall of leaves, of seeing it as the conclusion to the year and therefore metaphoric."

UPDATE re the Film

If you love this book, or think you may read and love it in the future, avoid the the 2003 film starring Jude Law, Nicole Kidman and Renée Zellweger.

It's not that it's an awful film (though the acting, accents, and very fake-looking snow and scenery are pretty poor), and it's not the many (very many) tweaks they made to the plot (some are inevitable with any adaptation from one medium to another).

No, the problem is that it seems to miss the entire point and atmosphere of the book. By a long, long way. There are some gory battle scenes, but in general, it's a sunny romance. The sun is shining far too much of the time, even in Inman's dangerous travels, most of the hardship is soft-focus, the power of the landscape is mostly missing, and the power of books is sidelined. Inman's Bartram is important, but only because, in the film, it was Ada's parting gift, so it's a memento from a lover, rather than something separate, but more profound.